Peggy King Jorde
Board Chair-Classical Theatre of Harlem NYC
Documentary Film Impact Producer, “Story of Bones”.
National Park Service, African Burial Ground Memorial, and Interpretive Center.
Bio:
Peggy King Jorde is a cultural projects consultant with an international practice in cultural heritage advocacy for marginalized communities. She led the efforts that realized the New York African Burial Ground Memorial and Interpretive Center, which precipitated her becoming a
principal subject and impact producer for the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival documentary “A Story of Bones.” It is a film about the struggle to protect a burial ground site in the South Atlantic for enslaved Africans direct from the Middle Passage.
she served under three NYC mayors, providing comprehensive oversight of all capital construction projects specific to New York’s cultural landmarks, public art, and art museums.Peggy took the lead in advocating and helped lead preservation efforts at the New York African Burial Ground National Monument and Interpretive Center.
Today King Jorde lends considerable focus to consulting for developers, working with the community and civic-based preservation efforts, and lecturing aimed at building awareness and building advocacy for cultural heritage in marginalized communities in the US and abroad. She has consulted government and community stakeholders on a development project in the British Overseas Territory of St. Helena in the South Atlantic. The project is believed to be ‘the largest burial ground of enslaved Africans direct from the Middle Passage.’ King Jorde is a film participant and producer in the British documentary about the project, entitled “A Story of Bones,” which premiered in June 2022 at the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC.
In addition to her burial ground advocacy projects in Georgia, New York, and Sint Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean, Peggy is actively leading a global impact campaign for preserving the African burial ground on Saint Helena Island in the South Atlantic. The island is an important marker of the Middle Passage of the transatlantic slave trade, located midway between Africa and the Americas on the routes used by slave traders. The British documentary about the site, “A Story of Bones,” premiered first at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival in New York. The film will premiere in London and Berlin at the Human Rights Film Festival in October 2022. King Jorde discussed the project in a UN forum on Slavery Remembrance.
Other Involvements
she does a lot of philanthropy or development work. She served as a board member at The Putney School in Vermont for more than a decade, was former Governor at the Englewood Field Club in New Jersey where she facilitated events to help raise awareness and funds for community based nonprofits and served on the Planning Board for the City of Englewood, New Jersey. In New York, Ms. King-Jorde chaired the Planning Committee for the Malcolm X Memorial with Dr. Betty Shabazz, was a board member of the Harlem Heights Historical Society, served on panels for the Percent for Art and Art in Architecture programs commissioning public art for federal and city buildings and spaces, and has currently finished her fifth term as board chair at her Harlem-based cooperative.